Interview 1 (Patreon)

A buddy—@Edwin_at_Work on Twitter—is trying to combine a self-help book with an anthology of furry submissions. It's an interesting project, and I wish him the best of luck.

My thinking is that self-help books are very serious affairs and what could be more serious than dealing with job seeking, unemployment, resumes, and interviews. So, my idea was for him to solicit very light-hearted scenes that could bring the mood back up before he dug back into the do's and do-not's of job hunting.

That said, please enjoy this short scene that I offered up as an example...

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“I really appreciate you seeing me today,” he explained. “I’ve scheduled two interviews for this afternoon, and I really didn’t want to take off two different days to get them both in.”

“I’m glad you could fit us in, too. This is my office here,” said Shelly with a flip of her paw. “Come on in and have a seat.”

But instead of sitting, the young fox took a moment to look about and admire how she had decorated her space. “Was this a marathon?” he asked, tapping a claw against a framed photo of the lynx crossing a finish line. “Do you run marathons?”

“Oh, heh, perhaps someday,” said Shelly, mildly embarrassed. “The company sponsors a five-k for breast cancer research every year. It’s a lot of fun and we encourage everyone to try it at least once.”

“That’s fantastic,” said Marcus. Then, gesturing to a photo on her desk, “Your kids?”

“Grandkids, actually,” she admitted.

“No!” He grinned wide, playfully.

She stood a moment longer, assessing him. “You’re quite the unusual candidate,” she said at last. “Most programmers—”

His green eyes sparkled, and he interrupted, “How do you spot the extroverted engineer?”

She laughed, and they both said in unison, “He’s the one staring at your shoes instead of his own.” She gestured to the seat and took her own. “Old joke.”

“Yeah, well, it tends to be true more often than it’s not.” He took a seat and pulled it closer. “But I fell in love with drama club in high school, lots of theater extracurriculars in college, and acting is a hobby now. I considered majoring in theater arts, but my first love has always been design.”

Shelly nodded, taking a moment to look over his resume once more. “Most impressive for someone so young,” she said, idly wondering if he’d padded his experience like so many younger applicants do.

“That bottom section is all open-source projects I’ve contributed to,” he explained. “So many of them are good, solid tools with terrible interfaces. I love swooping in, bringing their UI up a few notches, and leaving the project in a better state than I found it.”

She nodded, and he took a moment, fishing in the pocket of his charcoal-grey sports jacket. “Of course, lots of programmers contribute to each one, so unless you go through my pull requests in the git repos, it’s hard to appreciate what my contributions were.” He held up a silver USB stick. “But these are examples of things I’ve designed—mostly mock-ups, not complete products—screenshots and screencasts.”

He handed her the drive, and Shelly stuck it into her laptop.

“It’s set up as a slideshow, but you can navigate through them with the mouse if you want.” Marcus gestured to the clean whiteboard on the office’s back wall. “You mind?”

“No, go right ahead,” she said, turning back to the small computer’s screen.

Sketching on the board with a blue marker that was really ready to be retired, he explained, “I’m especially proud of the pizza ordering mock-up.”

On the screen, video began with Marcus in a pizza-delivery outfit. Shelly perked an ear in surprise and glanced back over at the fox’s resume, but all the jobs included were professional positions. Despite the name on his hat, “Pizza Palace” wasn’t listed.

“In the mock-up, you’ll see that I allow users to click toppings or drag-and-drop them.” He glanced over his shoulder for a moment and gave her a smile. “I animated topping sprinkling mostly because I found some free animations on the web. But watch how you can not only add a pizza to your order, but you re-open a pizza once added and edit your choices. Most ordering websites make you delete a pizza and then re-create it rather than letting you modify one after it’s in your cart.”

She stared in silence. In the video, the door opened on a female wolf dressed in skimpy lingerie. She ignored the pizza, staring hungrily at the delivery boy instead. Shelly glanced up and then back down. No, that was definitely Marcus, standing there, holding a pizza box.

Even though she kept the laptop’s sound muted, Live Caption still picked up the audio and slapped, “I’m afraid I don’t have any money for my order,” across the bottom of the screen. “How else can I pay you?”

Shelly’s eyes opened wider. She covered her open muzzle with both paws and stared. Marcus wore the delivery driver’s hat—though nothing else—as he and the she-wolf proceeded to work off the bill.

At the whiteboard, Marcus explained, “I’ve got a real love of responsive design. In the video, you’ll see that at tighter window sizes, these topping choices give up the descriptive text and calorie estimates. And at even narrower widths, the pizza graphic drops down below the topping buttons since the user’s primary focus is on designing their pizza, not being entertained by sprinkling ingredients.”

On the screen, Markus was now sandwiched between two very muscular guys—an otter and a tiger. Live Caption was trying its hardest to make words of the sounds, but failing in a spectacular fashion.

Marcus turned from the board. “Is that the sort of design you’d like to see here?”

Shelly wanted to respond. She wanted to ignore the video on her laptop screen, but Marcus was bursting from a cake wearing only a bowtie and a tiny Speedo. Live caption spooled the words to “Happy Birthday” underneath.

A silence hung over the office, air conditioning blowing in from the overhead vent was the only sound.

“What?” asked the fox from the far side of the office. Then, his eyes went wide and he dug frantically in his pocket before producing a second USB stick.

His voice dropped almost to a whisper, “Please say I didn’t give you the drive for the wrong interview.”

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Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15EpDaeBy7oRbqOKdBjWkM_EvA8po5Eu7cltiJ8BY_Oo/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?